am dead.' At times they have enabled the doctor, when otherwise
he would have been in doubt as to his prognosis, to determine whether
the strange apyretic interval occasionally present in the last stage of
yellow fever was the fatal lull or the lull of recovery; and 'What say
the flies?' has been the settling question. Among many, many cases
during a long period I have seen but one recovery after the assembling
of the flies. I consider the foregoing as a confirmation of smell being
the guide even to the attendants, a cadaverous smell has been perceived
to arise from the body of a patient twenty-four hours before death."]

When every wild elephant had been noosed and tied up, the scene
presented was truly oriental. From one to two thousand natives, many of
them in gaudy dresses and armed with spears, crowded about the
enclosures. Their families had collected to see the spectacle; women,
whose children clung like little bronzed Cupids by their sides; and
girls, many of them in the graceful costume of that part of the
country,--a scarf, which, after having been brought round the waist, is
thrown over the left shoulder, leaving the right arm and side free and
uncovered.

At the foot of each tree was its captive elephant; some still struggling
and writhing in feverish excitement, whilst others, in exhaustion and
despair, lay motionless, except that, from time to time, they heaped
fresh dust upon their heads. The mellow notes of a Kandyan flute, which
was played at a distance, had a striking effect upon one or more of
them; they turned their heads in the direction from which the music
came, expanded their broad ears, and were evidently soothed with the
plaintive sound. The two young ones alone still roared for freedom; they
stamped their feet, and blew clouds of dust over their shoulders,
brandishing their little trunks aloft, and attacking every one who came
within their reach.

At first the older ones, when secured, spurned every offer of food,
trampled it under foot, and turned haughtily away. A few, however, as
they became more composed, could not resist the temptation of the juicy
stems of the plantain, but rolling them under foot, till they detached
the layers, they raised them in their trunks, and commenced chewing
listlessly.

On the whole, whilst the sagacity, the composure, and docility of the
decoys were such as to excite lively astonishment, it was not possible
to withhold the highest admiration from the calm